Painting, Black Chair and Flower Vase, Signed on Recto, Signed and Dated on Verso by Shmuel Tepler

A chair, a jug, a flower. Paint this thick does the rest.

Black Chair and Flower Vase is an oil on canvas by Shmuel Tepler (1918-1998), ca. 1963, signed on the front and signed and dated on the back. Still life has long been where painters work out their ideas about form and color, using whatever happens to be in the room. Here a pale jug holds a single flower against the ladder back of a dark chair, beside a dark round form, on a green ground. Heavy strokes stand up from the surface. A ribbed silver frame surrounds it. Thirteen inches wide and 16.5 high.

The flower is the only one here with anything to say.